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Thursday, January 11, 2018

Dalgety Bay - 200 (and 1) up

View to the distant yacht club at the other end of my square

A few more species which are more or less routine, and with a fair list of birds which ought to be around things are ticking along relatively smoothly. I picked up three species of millipede yesterday but they just kill me. Two I couldn't identify and the other was a juvenile Polydesmus. No idea why I have such a hard time with them. I end up in couplets where I know both answers are nonsense. Maybe I need a different key.

Here are a couple of pics of things that I could identify.

Coleroa robertiani, very common on Herb Robert

Leaf miner Phytomyza chaerophylli

The starry Homalothecium sericeum - a common wall dweller

Equipment feature - a £2 craft box for mosses and small fungi and a pot for catching non-flying inverts courtesy of my local takeaway. Both invaluable!

I also just noticed that today's additions bring the bryophyte total up to the year total for 2017! Still a bit of fishing left in that pond though.

Maybe I'll feature my lichen kit since that's the next port of call. For bryophytes I should also feature a small spray bottle which is very handy for wetting dried bryophytes in the field. Looking forward to seeing the bryo pics. One of the best things about bryophytes is that you can store them dry and they're more or less the same when you re-wet them